Those are def very cool cabinets to have for the Museum. However they probally held the more recent Itanium SGI systems, not the classic MIPS based systems from the '90s. The Altix badge on the top hints at what they did. They were used for large computing clusters- which was probally why HP High Performance Computing now owns the rights to most of that tech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altix I'm interested to go see what Princeton has, and help VFC (I'm close in Philly) so let me know the details as they come up. -andy

On Aug 29, 2019, at 11:33 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

Everyone,

Sometime this fall, we're going to rescue a pair of SGI cabinets from the Princeton University data center.

SGI customized the cabinets in black and orange ... because Princeton Tigers.

Their data center VP said these systems almost certainly can't ever run again. Too much disassembly already happened. So all he's promising us are the actual cabinets, not the remaining innards.

However, he asked if we can help disassemble those remaining innards, in order to make the cabinets lighter/safer to move.

I said what if we agree, but in exchange our guys get to keep those parts if desired? :)

Waiting to hear back.

I don't yet know much about the system. VP is asking some of his old-timers to write down its history for us.

Here is a picture: https://tinyurl.com/y6ldajlb

Heya! Do you know what the cabinet looks like? Usually SGI machines like the Challenge XL and Origin 2000 are pretty light compared to the other machines of their day. I've helped side a Challenge XL down stairs when I bought one years ago from somewhere out near Blacksburg VA (from someone called F-One Consulting.) Also I bought a full rack SGI Origin 2000 a number of years ago and it was shipped via crate to me. Both of them are light enough that two people can probably flip it onto it's back into a pickup with blankets down, although the XL IIRC has a back door that gets in the way with doing that. The boards for the XL are the same as the Onyx and Challenge L, it shouldn't be hard to get those back in service. The boards for the 4d/480 are same as the 4d/420, 4d/440 and such. Shouldn't be hard to get those back in service. The boards for the Origin 2000 are same as the Onyx2 mostly. Same as the others. It should be possible to get these back online with sourced boards.

Everyone,

Sometime this fall, we're going to rescue a pair of SGI cabinets from the Princeton University data center.

SGI customized the cabinets in black and orange ... because Princeton Tigers.

Their data center VP said these systems almost certainly can't ever run again. Too much disassembly already happened. So all he's promising us are the actual cabinets, not the remaining innards.

However, he asked if we can help disassemble those remaining innards, in order to make the cabinets lighter/safer to move.

I said what if we agree, but in exchange our guys get to keep those parts if desired? :)

Waiting to hear back.

I don't yet know much about the system. VP is asking some of his old-timers to write down its history for us.

Here is a picture: https://tinyurl.com/y6ldajlb